With the advancement in technology, communications systems are capable of providing better services to the users. In some applications that make use of presence services, communication devices report (referred to in the art as “publishing” or “updating”) to a central network entity (referred to in the art as a “presence server”) status or presence information of users of the communication devices (referred to in the art as “presentities”). The presence server distributes (referred to in the art as “notifying”) the presence information to other users (referred in the art as “watchers”) in the communications system. Generally, the presence information includes information such as the status of the communication device, availability of a user of the device, location of the communication device, current operation being performed by the device, preferred communications of the user, and the like.
Standard presence functionality allows a watcher (user, device, or application) to subscribe to the presence server to receive presence information related to one or more presentities. The subscription can be done individually for the one or more presentities or by using a presence Resource List that includes multiple presentities. Upon subscribing to the one or more specified presentities, the watcher is notified of presence information for the specified presentites. However, currently there is no mechanism that can enable a watcher to receive specific previous values for some presence information elements of specified presentites.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method for using recording rules and previous value selection rules for providing presence information in a communications system.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.